The idea behind the establishment of European Works Councils (EWCs) is that these are bodies which should be informed and consulted on company decisions and actions. However, this flow of information is often disrupted by confidentiality constraints imposed by management. Three central research... Find out more

On 31 January 2020, at 23:00, the United Kingdom (UK) officially ceased to be a member of the European Union (EU). One of the many areas that will likely be directly affected with regard to workers’ rights is the organisation and functioning of European Works Councils (EWCs). EWCs are company-level... Find out more

Are foreign multinational companies more or less likely than domestically-owned firms to recognise trade unions and engage seriously in collective bargaining? On the face of it, a multinational company is in a stronger position relative to employees as it can play off one group against another. On... Find out more

Letterbox companies are legal entities set up by businesses to benefit from a regulatory framework in a jurisdiction in which they have little or no material operations. They enable ‘regime shopping’ for lower taxes, wages, labour standards and social contributions, as well as for different legal... Find out more

For many years, in most European countries, the public sector has been under pressure to reduce expenditure and increase efficiency. Long-term pressures on the public sector, and especially the recent austerity drives following from the crisis, have led to reforms and cuts in public budgets with... Find out more

Starting with a general overview on domestic transposition measures of Directive 2008/104/CE on temporary agency work, the report then looks at the state of transposition in more detail, article by article. As the rules regarding the scope of the Directive did not seem to be a controversial issue... Find out more

Whatever lip-service may be paid to sustainable consuming, by far most European consumers still do their weekly shop in the big supermarket chains. A handful of groups have carved up this lucrative market and grown so powerful as to be able to drive producers’ selling prices steadily down. This is... Find out more

Transnational collective bargaining (TCB) has become a ‘hot’ topic of European industrial relations. As well as collective bargaining between workers and employers conducted at the sectoral or national level, negotiations on employee rights and working conditions now also take place at the... Find out more

This report on the trade union landscape in Poland forms part of a wide-ranging project, initiated and coordinated by the ETUI, which aims to map changes in unionisation and the varying organisational structures of unions in the ‘new member states’ of the European Union. The current report on the... Find out more

On 1 December 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force. Although often described as primarily technical, it significantly amended the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the old EC Treaty (now the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, TFEU). The authors’ aim in this book is to... Find out more